


and we were bound to the city life

by proser132



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU, but like decent ones I think?, point is, scientist OCs - Freeform, serious fluff ahoy, where did this even come from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4952263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proser132/pseuds/proser132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos Izquierdo was a few minutes old, the first time someone heard it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we were bound to the city life

**Author's Note:**

> I tried, in this fic, to bring back the feeling of early Night Vale episodes, but might have missed the mark a little. If you find grammatical errors or plotholes, remember: say nothing, and drink to forget.  
> ...or leave a comment so I can fix it. That works too.
> 
> Will be podficced by myself, so look for that in a few months or so.

Carlos Izquierdo was a few minutes old, the first time someone heard it. Covered in blood and screaming (the infant had no way of knowing that this would hardly be the last time he was such), he lay under an incubator and kicked impotently at the doctor. Being born a month early was serious business, and very frightening besides; the little one had a right to caterwaul, the doctor reasoned, which naturally interfered with her ability to hear his heartbeat correctly. There was simply no way she'd heard what she thought she had, and - there! Yes indeedy, a healthy heartbeat for the healthy niñito.

And there definitely was not a second thump every few seconds, strong and calm. Certainly not. That would be ridiculous.

Little Carlos, like all children born strange, born wondrous, and born a few minutes ago besides, hiccoughed, and was handed to his mother, and the doctor promptly forgotten.

  
  


The second time someone heard it wasn't actually the second time.

Miraculously, Carlos' family doctor until he was fourteen was a touch deaf, and always noted the abnormality of the occasional syncopated beating as his ears not being what they used to be. But, at fourteen, Carlos' father found work at a manufacturing firm across the country, and off they went, from blazingly hot Amarillo, Texas to the significantly cooler and wetter Boston, Massachusetts. And this doctor was not deaf.

‘Your son has a heart condition,’ the doctor said, voice as sterile as the room they sat in. ‘Minor cardio arrhythmia, as it happens. He won't need medication, but he certainly will need further testing.’

Carlos didn't like the sound of the testing, but he _did_ like the sound of the word arrhythmia, the way it rolled off the tongue.

He went home from that visit with a fretting mother and a series of appointments made for the near future. He dug out his school dictionary and looked up what the doctor had said. From there, though, for the first time, other words caught his eye, long words with as many syllables as he had fingers, and they all had so many interesting meanings.

He fell asleep that night with his cheek resting on the word zenith (the highest point of an arc; the astronomical centre of the heavens) and his second heartbeat thumping peaceably beside his first.

  
  


After that, a lot of people heard it, but since they had a name for it (even though that name was dreadfully wrong), it went mostly unnoticed.

Carlos was smart, though. He looked at the scans and read his own files, and finally concluded to his own satisfaction that there was nothing wrong with his heart at all. It beat steadily, and when he took to measuring his own pulse, his first heartbeat always matched it. But the second heartbeat was different - it had no effect on his pulse at all.

Instead, it seemed to be on its own schedule. It was sleepy and slow in the mornings, before walking up an hour or two after Carlos did. Sometimes it raced, as if exerting itself, and sometimes it thumped nervously beside Carlos' calm one, as if quivering beneath a weighty, inescapable terror.

Carlos took to tapping on his breastbone when that happened, and liked to think it helped, especially when the second heartbeat began to calm whenever he did it.

He wanted to know where the second heartbeat was coming from. He wanted to know so much about it, and he had no idea where to start.

Through high school, he spent all his time reading, and when he went to MIT, he took every damn science course he could squeeze into his schedule without killing himself.

Nothing answered his questions, though. When he finally left, it was at the age of thirty two, with three doctorates he’d never meant to receive and a second heartbeat that still thumped and bumped alongside his own, without explanation or concern.

  
  


For a few years, he drifted.

From small projects to attending experiments to a (disastrous) try at teaching, he tried to ignore the second heartbeat, the implications that for all his education, he could not grasp.

Maybe, he thought, _maybe it's a delusion? An auditory hallucination?_

The heartbeat thumped in his chest, resonating with his own. It seemed agitated, and Carlos tried to soothe it again, tapping on his sternum in time to the radio playing in his laboratory. It was a physical presence, for all that he didn't have a second heart. It couldn't be a delusion.

The phone rang, and he picked up to a colleague's breathless voice.

‘Dr. Izquierdo, you've got to get in on this expedition,’ he said, and ‘it's a fantastic opportunity’, and ‘The death toll is estimated to be quite low’, and more than a few ‘scientific wonder’s thrown in for flavour.

Carlos knew when he was being wooed, and he was between projects at the moment. Still, he was hesitant to sign on, given the worrying ‘death toll’ comment; ‘Where is this expedition to?’ He asked, idly playing with a pen.

‘A space anomaly in Arizona,’ said the colleague, whose name Carlos would later be unable to recall. ‘Or Nevada, it jumps around a bit. Locals call it Night Vale.’

Carlos' heart skipped a beat.

Well, at least, his second heartbeat did; his own heart picked up the pace in response. ‘What?’ he asked, a wary curiosity stirring in his chest, more great and terrible than had any before it.

‘They call it Night Vale,’ the colleague repeated, and again, his second heartbeat tripped over itself.

‘I'm in,’ Carlos said immediately. ‘Who do I talk to - know what, never mind, just fax me the contract, I'll send it back in twenty minutes.’

‘Really?’ his colleague said, sounding bewildered.

‘Yeah,’ Carlos said, tapping on his chest again, ‘and get me the data we've already got on the anomaly, I want to see every spreadsheet, every voice log, everything you have.’

‘There's a lot, Doctor, and a lot of it in fields outside your own. Are you sure you want -?’

‘Absolutely.’

Anything that made his second heartbeat react had to be important. ‘Night Vale,’ he whispered after he'd hung up, and if a heart could be said to purr, the second heartbeat did so.

  
  


His colleague hadn't been kidding. There was a ridiculous amount of documentation - at least two terabytes worth of reports and hazy photographs, shaky cam footage and interviews. What Carlos found it lacking was _substance_. So much was conjecture and extrapolation that Carlos spent two days and two nights parsing down the information to an understandable and cohesive whole.

The final report he compiled from what was left over was just under twenty pages of single-spaced, plain black text. He pissed off several of his new ‘teammates’ by not including their theories, but he didn't care; for the first time in his life, he was a step closer to understanding his own mysteries. He was so happy he could sing.

He packed up his life, as the project was estimated to take anywhere from five to ten years, and met the other eleven scientists and experts in Nevada, where Night Vale had been sighted last.

They divided into three teams of four, and it reminded Carlos of high school. The good looking scientists all grouped together, as if showing that you could be both attractive AND smart; they were all soft sciences, though. A psychologist, a sociologist, someone who looked like some kind of pop historian, and a man who clearly had last seen the inside of a lab in senior year undergrad. Across the room were the louder group, comprised of two journalists, an anthropologist, and a linguist. They were jovial and friendly, but Carlos had never been an extroverted man; he smiled lightly and held his tongue.

His own group was built with the hard sciences: a biologist specialising in homo sapiens and close relatives thereof, an astronomer who had more than a passion for particle physics, and a sweet old chemist who had a number of awards for her work on military grade explosives.

‘What can I say,’ she shrugged when Carlos had asked, ‘I guess I'm a revolutionary at heart. Couldn't blow up the establishment, so I blew up for them.’

Carlos' own three doctorates were in geology, research sciences, and discrete mathematics, and was summarily appointed the leader of his cadre ‘By number, dear, you've got my two docs beat fair and square.’

The Biologist (Dr. Sanders) was stone deaf, and Carlos was grateful for the languages credits he'd filled with ASL. He signed agreement with the Chemist (Dr. Rhienmenn), and the Astronomer (Dr. Forrest) nodded distantly, her head buried deep in her star charts.

‘Best range of fields,’ the Astronomer added. ‘What do you call yourself - a researcher? Mathematician? Geologist?’

‘I'm just a scientist,’ Carlos demurred, and the name stuck.

  
  


The Astronomer was in charge of navigating the way to Night Vale, which was difficult, since it moved around.

Carlos was a terrible driver (a fact with which he wholeheartedly agreed) and was relegated to the back of the massive van/portable research station, to catalogue the equipment. He passed out the condensed report he'd compiled, which was received gratefully. ‘I can't believe somebody actually read through all that,’ the Chemist chuckled, and the Biologist signed something back that Carlos refused to translate, given that a) he didn't understand all of it and b) several of the signs were pretty self-explanatory.

Inside his chest, the second heartbeat was calm and soothing, a steady counterpart to his own pounding pulse. He felt like a magnet must, when two opposing charges drew close together - like he was slotting slowly into place, like the world was coming together at last.

He was smiling the entire harrowing journey, and his smile only dimmed once he heard they were the only group left.

‘A snow storm,’ the Astronomer said, her voice as dreamy as ever, as far off and clinical as a surgical theatre. Not for the first time, Carlos wondered if it was to keep herself from feeling the gravity of the world, if by burying herself in the stars, she was trying to cut her tether to the world she had been born in. ‘Came and went in a few hours,’ she added. ‘Left them frozen to the road.’

‘Jesus,’ Carlos said, and the lapsed Catholic in him wanted to cross himself.

The Astronomer eyed him, but he seemed to pass whatever muster she was looking for, because she returned to charting their route on the road and directing the Chemist.

Carlos wondered if Night Vale hadn't wanted the other teams to enter its borders, but then shook his head; Night Vale wasn't sentient, after all. For whatever reason, the variables they had presented hadn't been within the parameters Night Vale required of them, and they had been (violently, he thought) rejected.

He ignored the niggling thought that they might have missed an important variable entirely, and spent the rest of the drive into Night Vale proper listening to his second heartbeat slowly begin to race as he drew closer.

  
  


Carlos hadn't known what he'd expected Night Vale to look like, but he hadn't expected it to be so _malleable_.

It was both a city and a village, a neighbourhood and a metropolis; it sprawled in unknown directions for unknown distances, but it only took less than an hour for them to cross the entire town.

‘Fascinating,’ The Astronomer said, scribbling away with her stylus at her tablet. ‘Absolutely fascinating. It's contracting and expanding at a rate that isn't visible.’

*I'm going to establish a baseline for all of us,* The Biologist announced with grand arm sweeps and quick flicks of his thin, wrinkled fingers. *Check up time, kids.*

‘You can't even use a stethoscope, mister,’ grumbled the Chemist, and Carlos froze.

*You'll do it for me,* the Biologist shrugged.

‘Sorry, what was that? I don't speak semaphore.’

*That's flags, you horrid -*

‘Okay, I'll do it, break it up,’ Carlos said, and flinched back when the Chemist whirled on him. ‘...never mind,’ he said meekly under her stare.

‘Better, dear,’ she said, and took the clipboard from the Biologist's hands with a fierce yank. ‘Go sit down before you fall over, you look white as a sheet.’

Both of Carlos' heartbeats were racing, now, trading panic for panic in a complicated drumline, but he sat down, tapping on his chest unsteadily.

They ran through a few common things (blood pressure, pulse, ears and throat, etc.) before the Chemist swatted his arm. ‘Stop that, mister Scientist, there's nothing to be nervous about,’ she scolded. ‘Keep that up and I won't be able to hear your heart for all the noise!’

_You still won't,_ Carlos thought a little hysterically, as his own heart sped up and his second heartbeat sprinted to match it.

She stuck the little cup against his chest and began to listen. Then to frown. Then, she pinwheeled backwards in shock, her eyes wide and her pupils small in her surprise.

‘Impossible,’ she breathed. ‘I thought - I swear I -’

Carlos hunched up and refused to look her in the eye, hand pressed hard to his chest. ‘It's cardio arrhythmia,’ he said to the floor.

The Chemist snorted loudly.

‘I know what I heard, boy,’ she said, and Carlos looked up to see her smiling wildly. ‘You have another heartbeat. Probably had it your whole life, huh?’

Carlos stared at her, and was only broken free from his trance by the Biologist's emphatic demands to know what was going on.

‘He has two heartbeats! Two! Heartbeats!’ the Chemist said, loud and overexaggerated. ‘Like me and you!’

‘Hold on,’ Carlos said, jerking into motion and racing for his shirt. ‘You have -’

‘Yes indeedy, kidlet,’ she said warmly. ‘Me and old Sanders here figured each other out the first night.’

‘What do they mean?’ Carlos asked, more than a little breathless.

‘Dunno, but ours...’ She looked at the Biologist with a vast fondness Carlos would never see the full breadth of. ‘Our heartbeats matched.’

‘Matched?’

*Her second heartbeat is timed to my pulse,* the Biologist signed. *It's why I signed onto the expedition - it's historically incredibly rare, but there was a common thread in all of the accounts going back hundreds of years.*

‘Night Vale,’ Carlos whispered. ‘Night Vale is the answer.’

The Astronomer wandered in. ‘Are we talking about this now? Oh. I thought we were keeping it secret for dramatic effect.’

  
  


The City Council was terrifying in their presentation, but startlingly normal in their work.

Despite the talking in unison, the robes that seemed to contain expanses of darkness wider than any could comprehend, and the ridiculous soft meat crowns, they reacted the same way any small town would to a bunch of scientists rolling up in a massive caravan and declaring their intent to study them: they called a town meeting.

‘Hello,’ Carlos said awkwardly into the microphone, eyes on the shifting mass of people that never seemed to have the same number minute to minute. He tried to ignore the tall, androgynous figures that shone beside a small old woman, and failed entirely. ‘My name is Dr. Carlos Izquierdo -’

His second heartbeat gave a little flutter, and he stumbled over his next few words.

‘- and, uh, this is my team, Dr. Sanders, Dr. Forrest, and Dr. Rhienmann. We're here to conduct a general study of your town...’

Carlos got lost in the explanation, rambling much more than he wanted, but the townsfolk looked less murderously suspicious and more curiously suspicious by the end of it. He counted it as a success.

The Sheriff's Secret Police (which was a bit of a misnomer, since everyone seemed to know what they were doing at any given time) made to escort them from the town hall when a man darted close.

He was neither tall nor short, thin nor fat; Carlos was built like his father, though, six foot four if he was an inch and broad in the shoulders, so the man was smaller than him. He smiled, and his teeth were sharp. He blinked, and Carlos could see stars hiding in his pupils.

For a moment, he didn't know which of his heartbeats was beating faster.

‘Hello,’ said the man. ‘Cecil Palmer, with WTNV, Night Vale's community radio. Could I speak with you - and your team, of course - for a moment?’

‘I - um,’ Carlos said eloquently, distracted by his heartbeats. ‘I'm afraid we have some preliminary testing to do,’ he managed to say, and the man deflated a little.

‘Well, if you'd like to set up an interview over coffee - or dinner, I can certainly do dinner - or just want to call for any reason under the screaming yellow sun,’ the man said, and pulled a black card from his jacket pocket, ‘this is my personal number. Feel free to call whenever, or just dip the card in the blood of a virgin, whichever you think will reach me fastest.’

‘What?’ Carlos spluttered, but the man had already ducked back into the crowd with a merry laugh that echoed off of unseen structures, unknown architectures.

‘He was cute,’ the Chemist said brightly, and Carlos ignored her.

His second heartbeat had calmed some, but his first still beat heavily. He rubbed at his chest, breathing deeply; stages made him nervous, but he supposed he's have to get used to the position of spokesman.

For the first time, he felt a tapping on the inside of his collarbone, like something was trying to soothe him from the inside out; he wondered if this was what the person who's heart beat in Carlos' chest felt every time he'd done it. He looked around, but couldn't see anyone tapping their chest. Whoever it was, it was helping. He took another deep breath.

‘Okay, Rhienmenn, you head to the university, see if there's any scientists we can speak to. Forrest, I want you to check for temporal anomalies, you know they tend to go hand in hand with space anomalies.’ *Sanders,* he added, *I want you to go to the hospital, see if you can find out anything about the hearts.*

*You got it,* he replied, and kissed the Chemist on her cheek before bustling out with a small cadre of Secret Police.

‘And you?’ the Astronomer asked, eyes already distant with plans.

Carlos took out a Geiger counter from his pocket, and shrugged.

‘Science, I guess,’ he said, and earned a swat from the Chemist for his troubles.

  
  


The Biologist burst into the room later that night, door crashing open with a heavy clang. *CARLOS,* he signed excitedly, and Carlos swore he could hear the capitalised letters, *WHERE'S DORTHE AND FORREST?!*

*Is something wrong?* Carlos asked as he shouted for the other half of their team, who'd gone upstairs to unpack. Convenient, this lab space available for rent with a three room living space above it, he thought while waiting for them to come stumbling down the stairs.

‘What is it? Carlos?’ the Chemist demanded.

*Dorthe, dear, you'll never believe this,* the Biologist signed, almost too fast for Carlos to read.

*What's wrong?* She signed back, proving once and for all that she was a dirty liar, and enjoyed forcing Carlos to translate the Biologist's sweet nothings for her own amusement.

*The heartbeats,* he signed, thumping his fist on his chest and making Dorthe gasp, *they knew about the heartbeats!*

‘What did they say?’ Carlos said aloud as he signed, mostly for the Astronomer's benefit.

*It's normal, here, almost everyone has them.* The Biologist seemed to trip over the words in his excitement, hands shaking. *They guide people to Night Vale. Apparently it's how the city keeps its population up, given the death rate.*

‘Jesus,’ Carlos said. ‘It's not -?’ _More important? Some kind of soulmate scenario?_ ‘It's like a lure?’ He felt a bit of nausea rise in his throat.

*No, it's more than that,* the Biologist explained. *People who belong in Night Vale, the city matches to a perfect half. It's a sort of incentive to stay - be drawn here, get a free soulmate.*

‘Oh,’ Carlos said, and his first heartbeat felt light, like a full moon floating in his chest. ‘I...’

‘That's wonderful,’ the Chemist said and signed, her eyes trained on the Biologist with an intense focus.

‘That's nice,’ the Astronomer hummed, and grabbed Carlos' arm. ‘Come on, you still need to unpack.’

Dazed, Carlos followed her, and only later realised that the Astronomer had meant to give their teammates some privacy.

The second heartbeat was a smug sound in his chest, as if to say, _of course I'm perfect for you_.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered, but there was no response other than the continued, reassuring beating.

  
  


Carlos idly turned on the radio in his private corner of the lab, and paused at the voice that spilled out from the speakers like molasses.

‘...don't forget, red dots on what you love, and blue dots on what you don't,’ the voice said, then chuckled with a sound that made Carlos think of the deepest trenches of the ocean. ‘That kind of mistake you only make once.’

Carlos knew that voice, having heard it echoing in the town hall. He sat down and played with the ballpoint pen he'd filled out twelve forms to keep, listening intently.

‘Now, my dear listeners,’ the radio host continued, ‘I'm sure you're curious about the scientists that came to our humble little burg today, and like a vicious vengeance-driven swallow who declared war on the wildfire that slaughtered her entire family, you weren't sated by the little emergency town meeting today. Indeed, you may never be sated, just as a wildfire cannot truly be defeated.’

A sigh that sounded like a thousand trees shivering in an October gale.

‘So many questions were answered that we never even thought to ask, today. Many of them were questions banned by the famous 'Don't Ask, Don't Be Lost To An Implacable Void' Act of 1986, but they were nevertheless answered.’ A faint rustling sound, like the host was shuffling his papers. ‘The answers gave us new questions, though, questions not yet banned through municipal decree. What makes our admittedly beautiful and vibrant city so fascinating to these outsiders? Why have they come? Are they like so many other travellers, who have passed through our streets and gone on to different cities or planes of existence? Or are they just like us - from a different town, perhaps, or a different time, but still Night Vale-ien at hearts? Only time, or stringently enforced interrogation techniques, will tell.’

Carlos' second heartbeat was relaxed, thumping slowly and steadily; in comparison, his own heartbeat felt kin to a hummingbird, hovering and darting and refusing to be still.

‘Stay tuned next for a brilliant rendition of the musical Cats, as performed by the St. Petersburg Feline Sinfonia. Good night, Night Vale,’ the host was finishing when Carlos managed to listen again. ‘Good night.’

‘Hell of a voice,’ the Chemist said from behind him, and Carlos near leapt out of his skin. ‘Though,’ she gave him a sly look, ‘I'm betting you already noticed that.’

He felt himself flush, face hot as she cackled. ‘I'm examining the local culture,’ he offered, and knew it was weak. ‘The radio seems to play an important part in the local community structure,’ he elaborated, and that sounded better. ‘I wanted to see how it operates.’

The Chemist nodded. ‘And to hear Mr. - what was it, Palm-Olive? - again.’

‘I didn't know he was the host,’ Carlos could say truthfully. And then, because he had to, ‘It's Palmer.’

The Chemist waggled her eyebrows. ‘I know it is.’

  
  


Carlos dithered for a week (maybe it was closer to four) before acknowledging that, perhaps, he was avoiding the subject of his second heartbeat. Now that it was in Night Vale, the heartbeat tended towards the slower end of the spectrum - calm as a summer afternoon and just as warm beneath Carlos' breastbone. That was part of the problem.

Now that he knew what the heartbeat _was_ , he was shit-scared of it.

Someone was hearing his heartbeat. At any second of any day, someone was listening to his anxiety and his frustration, his melancholy and his paranoia. He had no idea what to do with that information.

And the idea that the second heartbeat was a sign that he was someone's perfect half - that was absurd. He was just Carlos, the reedy kid who grew up to be large and a little heavyset, the quiet one with too many words in his head to ever spit out his mouth. The one who had given up dating by junior year of college because girls were too emotional and boys were too casual, and vice versa. He was hardly the perfect half of anything, much less a whole other person.

Night Vale (because apparently the city had some kind of consciousness, or at least an awareness of sentient beings) had made a mistake, that was all. One that Carlos was determined to ignore.

The rest of the problem was that after a lifetime of keeping track of, and secretly cherishing, his second heartbeat, Carlos had no clue how to ignore it.

  
  


‘I'm feeling sentimental today, Night Vale.’

Carlos was the only one who spent any significant amount of time in the lab during the day, anymore; the Astronomer slept during daylight hours so that she could track the stars at night, the Biologist spent most of his time at the hospital, and the Chemist had been running tests on the imaginary corn farm's soil, west of town.

‘The sun is shining gently, the breeze is stirring, and even the void seems to be taking a day off from terrifying us all into an existential crisis. It's enough to make hearts sing, sweet listeners.’

He picked up the latest seismograph readings despairingly, and pulled his treasured pen to him, intending to try to make sense of them. He'd been trying since the day he'd got here, but maybe this time -

‘Speaking of hearts, it's the anniversary of the first heartmates today!’

Carlos jerked and tore the paper in two.

‘A very special day in Night Vale history, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I know you've all heard the story before. Many of you may be with your heartmate right now! I've always loved the tale, though, and given our new scientifically minded guests, I'd like to tell it.’

Carlos' heart hurt, with how fast it was beating.

‘Now, not long after our fair village was settled was the Great Exodus of 1811, in which nearly everyone tried to leave. No one's sure if it was the crippling drought, the desolate isolation, or the fact that there was a mysterious disease that was reducing all of the townsfolk to literal shades of themselves that sent people running. Probably everything, really.’

Without meaning to, Carlos chuckled.

‘But nevertheless, Night Vale was left with only a handful of brave, stalwart settlers, all determined to make this town as wonderful as it could be. Their belief in Night Vale - and the City Council's black magics, of course - created Night Vale's egregore. And Night Vale, being quite pragmatic, in my opinion, realised it wanted both its townsfolk to be happy and to have a great many townsfolk.’

Carlos had started talking notes somewhere after 'black magics'. He'd heard the term egregore somewhere before, but couldn't recall its meaning. Some kind of artificial intelligence, he surmised, ears still tuned to the host's voice.

‘And so, it gazed into the soul of the town sheriff, Excelsior Mathewson, and found his perfect match in the infamous bandit Carlson McQueen. It then took the sound of each man's heart, and put it in each other's chest. Given the time period, each man's day job, and the circumstances of the town's survival, this was considered a terrible idea.’

Laughter bubbled up from Carlos' chest. Clearly Night Vale had _always_ fucked up the matching. Of course it had chosen Carlos; he was as unsuitable for anyone as Carlson McQueen was for a town sheriff.

‘However, Night Vale had looked into Sheriff Mathewson's soul, and knew much that the townsfolk did not. Such as the fact that the sheriff was gay as the day was long. And that he was easily bribed and turned to a corrupt official, the kind that we certainly would never elect to office today.

‘Carlson McQueen rode into Night Vale less than a week later, having been haunted by prophetic dreams that he would never intimate the full extent of, and the rest is history. The attempted gun fight, the attempted assassinations, and the attempted wedding are all down in our death and marriage records, after all.’

‘Were they happy?’ Carlos asked of the radio, rubbing his chest as a wave of melancholy took him.

‘Eventually, of course, they settled down and adopted a group of orphans whose parents had perished on the long trek to California, and each of those orphans had a heartmate of their own. So it was that Night Vale gave us its greatest gift - or at least, most of us.’

Carlos frowned.

‘Not to get too personal - this is _your_ community radio, after all - but many of you already know that I was born with no heartbeat at all.’

Carlos flinched. He hadn't realised until just that moment how much he'd been hoping - but, no. He didn't even know the man, only his name, really. It didn't bear thinking about. And if his heartbeats meant there was a perfect someone out there for him, or that he was a perfect anything for someone else, why did he feel like he just lost something?

The radio host was still talking, but he flicked off the broadcast.

His second heartbeat began beating in anxiety, but for the first time in a very long time, Carlos didn't bother trying to soothe it.

  
  


Carlos saved Night Vale once, twice; so many times he lost count. He lost count of how many times he'd called the radio host, too, to warn the city of some impending danger, or to report the recent findings of the team to the now ravenously curious townsfolk.

No matter how often he called, it was never about the way both of his heartbeats stuttered when he walked into a room with the radio host in it. It was never about the way he felt sick with worry when the radio host went into danger with a smile and a recorder, like he was indestructible (and maybe he was, maybe Carlos worried for nothing, it wasn't like he knew the man at all).

It was never about the way Carlos insisted he be called Dr. Izquierdo, and called the radio host Mr. Palmer.

For the first time in his life, he resented the second heartbeat. He tried to ignore it when it grew anxious, but he always gave in.

‘Who _are_ you?’ he asked one night, as if it could answer.

Of course, it couldn't; it was a heartbeat, after all, not some kind of telephone. But Carlos resented the heartbeat for its lack of answer anyway.

  
  


Carlos was genuinely happy when he walked into the lab and found the Astronomer wrapped around a tall, dark skinned woman, more enthusiastic about something within ninety-six million miles of herself than he'd ever seen her. He was proud to say he wasn't even a little jealous, just – longing, he supposed. Wistful.

'Hello,' the woman said once they'd managed to detach themselves. 'I'm Dana Cardinal. You must be Carlos, yes? The Scientist?'

'That's me, yes,' Carlos said, shaking her offered hand. 'Nice to meet you.'

'Oh, it's great to meet you, too,' Dana said, smiling widely, her eyes a strangely bright gold that shifted to a red colour he'd only seen from a lithium flame before. 'Cecil talks about you all the time.'

Carlos managed to not flinch. 'I see,' he said, and made small talk for a half second before the Astronomer and her heartmate made themselves scarce.

Carlos' first heart ached, and his second heart beat like it always did, and that made nothing better, because the radio host didn't have one. Carlos buried himself in recalibrating the seismograph, because if he didn't think about it, then he could pretend the second heartbeat was just arrythmia, just like that doctor had said so long ago. It didn't change anything anyway, he told himself consolingly, that his heart was so pained. The radio host deserved something better than someone else's heartmate. And Carlos supposed his own heartmate deserved him, mess that he was.

He wondered when he'd admitted to himself that he cared, that he'd really, truly wanted to be Ce – Mr. Palmer's heartmate. Then he wondered why he'd bothered to lie to himself at all. It wasn't like the lie had made the ending any less painful, any less what it was.

  
  


‘Today is Secret Day, dear listeners, and you know what that means: today, you have to tell someone one of your deepest secrets- preferably a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police, but as long as it reaches their ears, anyone will do.’

Carlos munched on a sandwich in the blessed air conditioning of his car, radio playing in the background while he took a lunch break. He was out in the sandwastes trying to track an epicentre that kept moving locations, much to his annoyance; he wished it would just hold still long enough for him to measure how deep it was.

_If that's not moving, too,_ he thought crossly.

‘I've told a lot of secrets over the years, and I'm proud to say that only one of them was a fabrication,’ the radio host was saying. ‘This year, however, I'm going to tell a secret that I've kept almost my whole life, because I feel it's finally time for someone to know.’

A deep laugh, one that Carlos ached to hear in person, and a shuffling of papers. ‘And who better to tell it to than all of you, my beloved Night Vale?’

_Me_ , Carlos thought, but it was moot, since he was a part of Night Vale now, too.

‘Here it is,’ the radio host murmured, and against his better judgement, Carlos leaned in. His second heartbeat began to beat a little faster, as if fighting off nerves.

‘Sometimes,’ the radio whispered, ‘when I'm upset, or anxious, or pinned under the weighty terror that is daily existence, something - or someone - starts tapping inside my chest.’

Carlos' heart nearly stopped. His second heartbeat was going like mad, like it was terrified, and without thinking Carlos began tapping on his breastbone. On the radio, Cecil ( _call him by his name, no more distance, no more distance ever again_ ) gasped, and chuckled.

‘Guess I was feeling a bit nervous there, sweet listeners, because it just started up again. Whoever you are, it's very thoughtful. I appreciate it. Now, I think it's time for some weather.’

A song came on the radio, but Carlos wasn't listening. He was rummaging for Cecil's card and punching the number into his phone.

It picked up after two rings. ‘Hello?’ Cecil said, and god, it was addicting to hear his voice right next to his ear, even through the medium of a cellphone.

‘Mr. Palmer, hi,’ Carlos said, feeling more than a little breathless. ‘It's Dr. Izquierdo, the Scientist? I'm calling for, uh, for personal reasons.’

‘Carlos!’ Cecil yelped, then spluttered, ‘I mean, D-Dr. Izquierdo, what a surprise - I mean, a pleasure, an absolute pleasure.’ Cecil took a deep breath, and his heartbeat (because that's what it was, what it had to be) was faster than Carlos had ever felt before. ‘What can I do for you?’

Carlos tapped his chest soothingly, or tried to, and said, ‘Can we meet? I've, um, there's something we should talk about.’

‘Is something wrong?’ Cecil pressed. ‘Is Night Vale in danger?’

‘No, just,’ Carlos took a deep breath. ‘Can we meet somewhere?’

‘Absolutely,’ Cecil said, sounding confused and certain at the same time. ‘I sign off in five, can you come here? Or do you need to meet elsewhere?’

‘No, the station is fine,’ Carlos said. Then, screwing up his courage, ‘and, Cecil?’

Cecil sucked in a deep breath, and Carlos realised that was the first time he'd said Cecil's name aloud. ‘Yes?’

Carlos tapped his own chest once, hard, then hung up.

  
  


He stood outside the door to the radio station and fidgeted. If he was nervous, his second heartbeat was doubly so, hammering against his ribs as if it wanted to get out.

He didn't dare tap, though, terrified it would give Cecil the wrong idea, make him think Carlos wasn't...

The door flew open and Cecil dashed out, almost skidding into Carlos, his starry eyes wide and dilated. Carlos stared for a second, but then Cecil was babbling and he had to focus.

‘Carlos, what's wrong, are you hurt, is the city in danger, are _you_ in danger -’

‘I'm fine, Cecil,’ Carlos said, and Cecil's eyes dilated a little more, galaxies like pinpricks of light in the pupils, distant and lovely. ‘I needed to talk to you.’

‘What about?’ Cecil asked, tense.

‘Cecil...’ Carlos began, then wasn't sure how to continue. In the end, he just lifted a hand and tattooed a rhythm on his breastbone.

Cecil choked, and clutched at his chest; he stared at Carlos, mouth open. ‘It was you?’ he asked, and Carlos had never heard his voice so small.

‘I can feel you here,’ Carlos said, and tapped again. ‘Always have. Since I was born. Cecil, you have a heartbeat.’

Silence. Then Cecil smiled, a crooked grin that made Carlos' first heartbeat skip.

‘Of course it's you,’ he said, and looked for a moment like he might cry. ‘Of course I could never hear a heartbeat, it makes so much sense now.’

‘How so?’ Carlos asked, confused.

Cecil was still smiling, sweet and sharp, as he said, ‘As if any part of me would want to be apart from you.’

Carlos didn't mean to kiss Cecil; he meant to say something, meant to ask what this meant, where they went from here. Instead, Cecil's mouth opened under his and his sharp teeth were shockingly gentle on his bottom lip.

He could live like this, he realised, as Cecil broke away with a gasp and dove right back in, kissing like his entire life had been spent waiting for this.

Carlos couldn't tell their heartbeats apart anymore, and something in his chest lightened; it felt as if something has been lifted, or maybe put back in its proper place. Cecil shivered and groaned a little, pressing into Carlos' arms.

‘I wondered what your heartbeat would feel like, if it was mine,’ Cecil murmured into the warm space between their mouths. ‘It feels _perfect_ , Carlos. My heart came back to me.’ Cecil kissed the corner of Carlos' mouth. ‘You brought my heart back.’

Carlos huffed out a laugh, and their hearts beat together.

Above them, below them, around them, Night Vale was content.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative Title:
> 
> i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)


End file.
